iTakeaway: A patent owner’s preliminary response can be used to argue against a petitioner’s proposed claim construction and to point out evidence missing in a petition, in order to persuade the Board not to institute an inter partes review.
In its Decision, the Board denied institution of the inter partes review, because the information presented in the Petition did not demonstrate that there is a reasonable likelihood that Petitioner will prevail with respect to at least one of the challenged claims. The ’114 Patent relates to vision or imaging systems for vehicles and, more particularly, to imaging systems that are operable to determine if a vehicle or object of interest is adjacent to, forward of, or rearward of the subject vehicle to assist the driver in changing lanes or parking the vehicle.
Petitioner asserted a number of different obviousness rejections based on different combinations of references. Patent Owner argued against Petitioner’s proposed claim construction in its Preliminary Response. Patent Owner was successful in persuading the Board to adopt its interpretation of at least one term. Patent Owner argued that “adjusts said processing of captured image data” does not include physically adjusting the camera, because the phrase refers to processing captured data.
Patent Owner was also successful in arguing that Petitioner made impermissible changes to the Corrected Petition in response to the Board’s Notice of Filing Date Accorded, by adding citations to an exhibit. The Board did not consider those citations for purposes of determining whether to institute the inter partes review.
The Board was persuaded by the arguments in Patent Owner’s Preliminary Response that the cited references did not teach each and every element of the claims. For example, the Board found that Petitioner did not show that the cited references taught “wherein, in determining objects of interest present in the field of view of said imaging device, edges that are not indicative of objects of interest are substantially ignored in order to at least one of (a) reduce processing requirements and (b) reduce false signals,” merely by teaching “finding rectangles that enclose the dominant line segments and their neighbors in the image plane.” The Board found that the prior art described how objects of interest are identified, but does not describe what happens to edges outside of such rectangles. Similarly, the Board was not persuaded that the cited references disclosing three different image cameras taught “said imaging device has a field of view rearward . . . , forward . . . and sideward . . . ,” because Petitioner did not explain how a person of ordinary skill in the art would combine the three discrete cameras into one “imaging device” that has a field of view including all three directions.
Valeo, Inc., Valeo S.A., Valeo GMBH, Valeo Schaltern und Sensoren GMBH, and Connaught Electronics LTD v. Magna Electronics, Inc., IPR2014-00223
Paper 13: Decision Denying Institution of Inter Partes Review
Dated: May 29, 2014
Patent 8,386,114 B2
Before: Jameson Lee, Phillip J. Kauffman, and Matthew R. Clements
Written by: Clements
Related Proceedings: Magna Elecs., Inc. v. Valeo Inc. et al., No. 2:13-cv-11376 (E.D. Mich., March 28, 2013); IPR2014-00220; IPR2014-00221; IPR2014-00222; IPR2014-00227; and IPR2014-00228
